5 ms·

While I don't wish you ill will, I do wish to remark that you have had it remarkably easy with this. Source: 7 ISPs. In Africa. On unreliable power, broken fib

While I don't wish you ill will, I do wish to remark that you have had it remarkably easy with this. Source: 7 ISPs. In Africa. On unreliable power, broken fibre, people stealing your spectrum, etc.

ndespres 10y ago
I subscribed to Chris' newsletter as I hope to hear more about the challenges involved in his endeavor. Starting a small ISP has been a vision of mine since my first after-school job at a ISP helpdesk 15 years ago. I'd really love to be involved in running a community ISP in an underserved area, so I'm interested in reading about the technical and regulatory challenges especially. @froztbyte I'd be doubly interested in a writeup of your experience, have you blogged anywhere?
- froztbyte 10y ago
  Nothing exciting published, no. Blogging wasn't particularly big around this part of the world/specific-weird-subset-of-the-market for most of that time. Should I consider writing up some of them? Past aside, there are many things already underway, in many areas, that you could be involved in if you wished. Do some research around areas that you find yourself interested in (both technologically, and geographically), and see where that takes you.
  - ndespres 10y ago
    I'm the type of person who can lose hours reading stories on sites like Jargon File, Folklore.org, Raymond Chen's blog about MS internals, and even more modern internet history stories. And as I wouldn't limit my search on areas to get involved in muni ISPs to my own country, a global perspective would be interesting to read.
    - doubleplusgood 10y ago
      Seconded. I spent a lot of time in my teenage years just reading plaintext HOWTOs and RFCs (metered dialup sucks).
      - rootsudo 10y ago
        Thirded. It's fun, and educational. It empowers the ADHD in me.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
Do your customers tolerate all that? As in, can you ignore a good chunk of it because Internet issues are more acceptable in Africa? Or did you have to prevent, detect, and/or mitigate all of it because they expect nearly-perfect Internet in your area?
- froztbyte 10y ago
  By way of answering, let me recount a short story for you. It takes place during the very first time I visited Kampala (the capital of Uganda). It was about 3 years before I had started working in the ISP/telecom space in Africa. This particular trip was soccer-specific (I was working on the team that delivered one of the big trans-national African tournaments' games on television), thus the non-ISP nature of it. We arrive at our hotel, having driven just under an hour from Entebbe to Kampala. It's fairly pleasant, albeit a tad humid (it's mid-day and near the equator after all; 36C and >=70% humidity - not the worst). There's a group of around 30 of us that now need to check in... this always takes a little while. So, everything goes on. You loaf around the hotel reception until it's your point in the queue, grab some water now and then when you can. Finally, you're standing at the front desk, starting your process of checkin. You read off your name... the person behind the counter finds you in the list (of fortunately mostly checked-off people - yay alphabet precedence!), and starts doing some stuff on the front desk computer. At which point you glance over to said desktop and notice the UPS jacked into the UPS jacked into the UPS (yes, three) jacked into the computer. You idly inquire about this. The response is "oh, yeah, the other ones died with all the power outages". Not a joke, as it turns out. While you're doing your checking, the building experiences a brownout twice. Years later, you get there for a totally different reason. Time (literal years) has passed. And during setup of some equipment (here, I'm skipping about two days' worth of time), you find that the reason your laptop screen kept dimming and your DC UPS' kept beeping.... is because you're getting such major voltage swings on the building feed that everything is going over-or-under-voltage. This is daily life (in many parts of Africa). It isn't a thing to fight against. It just is. You take it, and try to do your utter best. You try to deliver your utter best. And if you just push hard enough (and, imo, if you're really, really lucky) you maybe get somewhere with it!
  - 10y ago

While I don't wish you ill will, I do wish to remark that you have had it remarkably easy with this. Source: 7 ISPs. In Africa. On unreliable power, broken fibre, people stealing your spectrum, etc.

ndespres 10y ago

I subscribed to Chris' newsletter as I hope to hear more about the challenges involved in his endeavor. Starting a small ISP has been a vision of mine since my first after-school job at a ISP helpdesk 15 years ago. I'd really love to be involved in running a community ISP in an underserved area, so I'm interested in reading about the technical and regulatory challenges especially. @froztbyte I'd be doubly interested in a writeup of your experience, have you blogged anywhere?

froztbyte 10y ago
Nothing exciting published, no. Blogging wasn't particularly big around this part of the world/specific-weird-subset-of-the-market for most of that time. Should I consider writing up some of them? Past aside, there are many things already underway, in many areas, that you could be involved in if you wished. Do some research around areas that you find yourself interested in (both technologically, and geographically), and see where that takes you.
- ndespres 10y ago
  I'm the type of person who can lose hours reading stories on sites like Jargon File, Folklore.org, Raymond Chen's blog about MS internals, and even more modern internet history stories. And as I wouldn't limit my search on areas to get involved in muni ISPs to my own country, a global perspective would be interesting to read.
  - doubleplusgood 10y ago
    Seconded. I spent a lot of time in my teenage years just reading plaintext HOWTOs and RFCs (metered dialup sucks).
    - rootsudo 10y ago
      Thirded. It's fun, and educational. It empowers the ADHD in me.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

Do your customers tolerate all that? As in, can you ignore a good chunk of it because Internet issues are more acceptable in Africa? Or did you have to prevent, detect, and/or mitigate all of it because they expect nearly-perfect Internet in your area?

froztbyte 10y ago
By way of answering, let me recount a short story for you. It takes place during the very first time I visited Kampala (the capital of Uganda). It was about 3 years before I had started working in the ISP/telecom space in Africa. This particular trip was soccer-specific (I was working on the team that delivered one of the big trans-national African tournaments' games on television), thus the non-ISP nature of it. We arrive at our hotel, having driven just under an hour from Entebbe to Kampala. It's fairly pleasant, albeit a tad humid (it's mid-day and near the equator after all; 36C and >=70% humidity - not the worst). There's a group of around 30 of us that now need to check in... this always takes a little while. So, everything goes on. You loaf around the hotel reception until it's your point in the queue, grab some water now and then when you can. Finally, you're standing at the front desk, starting your process of checkin. You read off your name... the person behind the counter finds you in the list (of fortunately mostly checked-off people - yay alphabet precedence!), and starts doing some stuff on the front desk computer. At which point you glance over to said desktop and notice the UPS jacked into the UPS jacked into the UPS (yes, three) jacked into the computer. You idly inquire about this. The response is "oh, yeah, the other ones died with all the power outages". Not a joke, as it turns out. While you're doing your checking, the building experiences a brownout twice. Years later, you get there for a totally different reason. Time (literal years) has passed. And during setup of some equipment (here, I'm skipping about two days' worth of time), you find that the reason your laptop screen kept dimming and your DC UPS' kept beeping.... is because you're getting such major voltage swings on the building feed that everything is going over-or-under-voltage. This is daily life (in many parts of Africa). It isn't a thing to fight against. It just is. You take it, and try to do your utter best. You try to deliver your utter best. And if you just push hard enough (and, imo, if you're really, really lucky) you maybe get somewhere with it!
- 10y ago